Captain Trips
'''Captain Trips '''is Mark Meadows, one of the world's most brilliant biochemists. He is also an ace with the unusual ability of transforming into several different and powerful aces by ingesting special powders made of psychoative drugs. He call these alternate identities his "friends." As Captain Trips, he was a Hippie superhero, the last believer in the peace and love ideals of the 1960s. Mark effectively ceased to exist in 1994, when he transformed permanently into the Radical, an extremely powerful combination of all his superpowered identities. Unfortunately, the Radical is a violent, almost insane extremist. It's unknown to what extent the Meadows personality still exists inside the Radical. History Mark Meadows was born in a suburban, middle-class family in South California. He was the typical nerd: extremely intelligent, socially awkward, tormented by the high school bullies, and nursing an unrequited love for the beautiful Kimberly Ann Cordayne, his neighbour and the popular girl at school. Mark went to college at MIT, where he was hailed as the Einstein of biochemistry, and then to University of California for his doctorate in 1970. In Berkeley, Mark became fascinated with the chemistry of mind and the hippie subculture. He then met Kimberly again, now turned hippie and calling herself Sunflower. Mark wanted three things desperately: Sunflower, being a part of the hippie culture, and attaining effective personality, becoming someone more decisive. In May 5 of 1970, Mark took LSD for the first time, at Sunflower's urging. Mark's wild card activated, and he transformed into the Radical, the greatest hero of the Counterculture, the blonde god of revolution. In a legendary showdown at People's Park, the Radical defeated Hardhat, the conservative ace. But in the following morning, he reverted back to Mark Meadows, with fragmented memories of what had happened. Becoming the Radical again became Mark's lifelong quest. Mark experimented with LSD several more times, but with no success. Mark became a extremely successful scientist in the late-1970s, publishing several important works, some of them about the wild card virus. He married Sunflower and they had a daughter, the beautiful Sprout Meadows, tragically retarded, eternally with the mind of a 4-year old. For several reasons, both Mark's marriage and his academic career deteriorated. He and Kimberly divorced, and Mark gained Sprout's custody due to Kimberly's alcoholism. Mark's experimentation with psychoactive drugs continued, and he managed to again release the ace living inside him, several aces actually. He developed five varities of special powders, each one of them enabling him to transform into a different ace: Jumpin' Jack Flash, a pyrokinetic with an impulsive, hyper-active personality; Moonchild, the beautiful female Asian martial artist and commited pacifist; Cosmic Traveler, the supreme coward capable of becoming insubstantial and changing his appearance; Starshine, the solar-powered champion and passionate environmentalist; and finally Aquarius, a surly were-dolphin, disdainful of surface-dwellers. Mark called his alternate identities his "friends." He moved to New York City in 1986, taking his daughter with him. He opened a head shop in Greenwhich Village, the Cosmic Pumpkin. He also adopted the superheroic identity of Captain Trips, a defender of the ideals of peace and love. Mark met and started a close friendship with Dr. Tachyon and worked with some other members of New York's wild card community, but most of them saw Captain Trips as a joke. His "friends," particularly J. J. Flash and Starshine, became famous aces, but almost no one knew they were actually facets of the inept Captain Trips. In 1989, the country had become hostile to wild carders, and Mark lost custody of his daughter when it was revealed to the world that he could transform into several different aces. Mark Meadows became public enemy number one when the Bush administration and the DEA made him into a target on account of his drug-use and dangerous superpowers. He became a fugitive for several years. In 1991, Mark escaped to Vietnam, where he became involved in a rebellion that ended with his alter-ego Moonchild becoming president of South Vietnam. By that point, he was reunited with his daughter Sprout. In 1994, Mark was attacked and removed from power by the Card Sharks, a conspiracy of anti-wild card conservatives. They abducted his daughter too, and forced Mark to work on the Black Trump, a virus designed to erradicate all the wild carders. Eventually Mark escaped and tried to stop the plans of the Card Sharks, but ended up beaten almost to death by Layton, a thug in the employ of the Sharks. In a desperate move, Mark ingested a mixture of several psychoactive drugs and transformed into the Radical again, after almost 25 years. For some reason, this transformation proved to be definitive, and the Mark Meadows persona became submerged for good. The Radical helped defeat the Card Sharks. But in the following years, the former hero of the revolution showed his true face: bloodthirsty, fanatical, stopping at nothing to advance his leftist political agenda. He became the enforcer and power behind the throne in the People's Paradise of Africa. One of the world's greatest heroes was now unquestionably a villain. Mark Meadows was reduced to just a conscience that haunted the Radical in his dreams. Category:Aces Category:Created by Victor Milán Category:Drug-Users Category:Introduced in Wild Cards Category:Protagonists Category:Scientists Category:Shapeshifters Category:Wild Cards characters